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The American composer Katherine Kennicott Davis wrote the song "Little Drummer Boy" in 1941. She originally called it “Carol of the Drum” and wrote it under the pseudonym C.R.W. Robertson. “[One day], when she was trying to take a nap, she was obsessed with this song that came into her head and it was supposed to have been inspired by a French song, ‘Patapan,’” says Claire Fontijn, a musicologist at Wellesley College. According to Fontijn the idea for the song came to Davis when she was trying to take a nap, and stop thinking about the French song “Patapan” and it kept playing in her head like “pa-rum-pum-pum.” That’s how those lyrics ended up in “Little Drummer Boy.”

The Biden administration hopes to use generous tax credits to boost electric-vehicle sales and push automakers away from Chinese suppliers. A key material in EV batteries shows why it is proving hard to do both at once. A 2022 law that President Biden championed revamped a $7,500 tax credit for consumers who buy electric vehicles. Among the new rules, the law stipulated that the credits can’t go toward buying any EVs containing battery parts from a “foreign entity of concern,” which includes China... “I would want to know how any automaker, based on the supply chain they’re working with today, meets these standards in 2025,” said Jay Turner, a professor of environmental studies at Wellesley College who wrote a book about batteries.

"The Incredible Women Making Strides in Science" is an upcoming series highlighting the women changing the fields of astronomy, medicine, physics, psychology, healthcare, and science communication. The series will profile 10 leaders, including President Paula Johnson.

Karen Plaut, Purdue’s executive vice president for research, led a public discussion with President Paula Johnson. This event, Beyond X and Y: Gender Biology and Women’s Health," was part of the Leading the Way interview series run by the Purdue Women’s Global Health.

"In the United States, [Spanish and Portuguese people] are not racialized as Latinos in the same way as people from Latin America," says Petra Rivera-Rideau, professor of American studies. "Latin music as a category that's just language-based — so you don't have to think about race, you don't have to think about national origin, you don't have to think about any of those tricky things that can provoke a lot of contention and just celebrate Spanish — is very convenient."  

"We are close to the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, and peace and tranquillity are nowhere in sight," writes Africana studies professor Selwyn Cudjoe in his article about the Isreal-Hamas war. 

Paul Fisher, professor of American studies, was interviewed on PBS News Hour about the new Boston exhibit on the painter John Singer Sargent.  

Trailer for the film Stamped From the Beginning. Africana studies professor Kellie Carter Jackson joins other leading female academics and activists such as Dr. Angela Davis, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, and Brittany Packnett Cunningham to guide viewers through a searing account of how racist tropes and imagery were developed and enshrined in American culture.

Jay Turner, professor of environmental studies, is mentioned in this commentary by California State Representative Devon Mathis of Tulare, Calif. "As Dr. Jay Turner from Wellesley College articulates in The New York Times, the dominance of China over the global supply of minerals needed presents a geopolitical problem. China announced establishing export controls for these vital minerals, putting the vulnerability of the United States and California’s clean energy ambitions in jeopardy of delays and additional costs."